Abstract
BackgroundResearch on the prevalence of sexual violence in sport mostly focuses on incidents of sexual violence that happen in the context of sport, but few studies are available that systematically target the lifetime prevalence of sexual violence in the athletes (as persons), combining experiences in sport and outside the sport system. The aim of the current study was thus to compare sexual violence experiences of elite athletes in Germany in sport with those outside sport.MethodsThe study was carried out in cooperation with the German Olympic and Paralympic Committee who contacted their registered elite athletes. In total, 1529 elite athletes took part in an online survey and answered questions regarding their sexual violence experiences first in the context of sport and afterwards outside the sport context.ResultsResults show that 54.2% of the athletes had experienced some form of sexual violence during their lifetime, 20.6% even a severe incident of sexual violence. Incidents happened more often outside sport than in sport, but 48% of the victims were affected in both areas of life, indicating a high overlap of victimization experiences.ConclusionOne recommendation from our results is therefore to make even stronger efforts to protect young athletes from becoming a victim of sexual violence. In case a sport club has a person of trust in the club, it can be an important place for athletes with sexual violence experiences (no matter whether experienced inside or outside sport), so that they are being heard and helped.
Highlights
A serious problem for the comparison of earlier studies in the area of sexual violence in sport is the fact that almost every publication uses another definition of sexual violence and includes more or less incidents of violence into the definition
The prevalence rate was at 43.4% for the whole sample, and 17.0% had experienced a severe form of sexual violence
For the overall experience of sexual violence in sport and outside sport, the McNemar test revealed a significant difference between the two situations (χ2(1) = 43.67; p < 0.001; OR = 1.41) with the prevalence being higher outside sports than in sport
Summary
A serious problem for the comparison of earlier studies in the area of sexual violence in sport is the fact that almost every publication uses another definition of sexual violence and includes more or less incidents of violence into the definition. Vertommen and colleagues (Vertommen et al, 2016) included the frequencyofoccurrence ofthe single incidents into their categorization of severity, and differentiated between ‘mild sexual violence’, ‘moderate sexual violence’ and ‘severe sexual violence’ In this manner, a situation of sexual harassment is categorized as ‘mild’ if it happens only once, but can be ‘severe’ if it occurs regularly and/or over a longer period of time (for the detailed assignment to the different categories see Vertommen et al, 2016). In case a sport club has a person of trust in the club, it can be an important place for athletes with sexual violence experiences (no matter whether experienced inside or outside sport), so that they are being heard and helped
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